Monday Odds & Ends: animated "Doctor Who," Buffy and Colbert, "Supernatural" & Little Red Riding Hood

+ The BBC released its first look at the new Doctor Who animated special, "Dreamland," set to air this fall. Voiced by David Tennant, the special takes the Doctor to Roswell, New Mexico, home of the famous (infamous?) flying saucer crash/hoax of the late 1940s. I haven't seen the other "Who" animated special but I'm liking the illustration work for this one:

+ Looking forward to the new season of "Supernatural?" Here's a new preview to tide you over:



+ Speaking of apocalypses, here's something I never thought I'd see: a Stephen Colbert/"Buffy" crossover. Now I haven't been keeping up with Dark Horse's Season 8 "Buffy" comics but apparently recent developments have Harmony landing her own reality show and going on "The Colbert Report" to pimp it. This scenario tickles me to no end. Here's a panel from the comic:

+ Details emerged this weekend on the new "World of Warcraft: Cataclysm" expansion. Among the newsy bits, there's gonna be goblins and werewolves now. The expansion is set for release in 2010.

+ We're going back to the classics at least: Leonardo DiCaprio's production company is looking to revamp "Little Red Riding Hood," putting -- and I'm not making this up -- a teenage love triangle at the center of the story. It looks like "Twilight" director Catherine Hardwicke will be directing this bad boy as well. It's totally going to put a downer on the prom, though, when grandma gets eaten. Sorry, spoilers.

+ Now this sounds like it could actually be a cool movie: a film adaptation of the "Bioshock" game, which scares the bejeezus out of me just watching my husband play it. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, who directed "28 Weeks Later," which, coincidentally also scared the bejeezus out of me, will head this one up too.

+ Check back in later today to find out who won the nifty "9" prize. And thanks to everyone who entered -- it was great to see so much interest!

When your significant other becomes just as nerdy as you...

Below is a picture of my husband. We’ll call him Hoyt, which is what he goes by for a good three or four hours every day since he discovered what the head-shaking pundits call “World of Warcrack,” also known as WoW.



Hoyt describes himself as a “shy, Level 28 Night Elf Hunter who likes to hang out around Darkshore helping his fellow Guards of Valor Guildies.” I know Hoyt best, however, as the man who sits to the right of me on the couch every night.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not one of those wives who shakes her finger at her husband and says he can’t play his games. If I were, our living room wouldn’t be filled with every gaming system known to man, and I also wouldn’t be a champion Wii tennis pro in my own right. No, what I’m worried about is this: has my husband always been a nerd or did I make him this way?

It’s the age-old chicken and the egg question. Did Hoyt’s passion for Halo and Guitar Hero and World of Warcraft start because of me and my lifelong nerdness? Or was it always there, lying dormant beneath what seemed to be a hockey-loving, baseball-cap wearing, loud-music listening, fast car-driving All-American man exterior?

He claims he was always a nerd, but I don’t know if I buy it. Sure, when he was little he used to shoot his Chewbacca action figures into the air and he probably read the occasional comic book, and yeah, he has SuperMario World completely memorized, which is freaky to this day. But I tend to think that our proximity over the years has taken his latent nerd gene and sent it to levels he never would have imagined before we met. I know it’s true for me. He’s helped unleash new facets of my personality, like my sports-loving gene. He's made me face the fact that I might like Metallica and gotten me to enjoy movies with zombies in them, so the proximity theory makes sense to me. Besides, I like the idea – if two people can’t raise their nerd flag high with each other, than what’s the point of togetherness anyway? Sometimes you need that other person to brag to about slaying your undead demonoids or hash out whether President Roslin’s one of the Final Five. Forget all that Hallmark stuff about roses and teddy bears. This is how the system should work.

Of course, before I wrap this up and put a big bow on it, I should point out that Hoyt has made a World of Warcrack character for our cat. Yes, our cat. And he calls other players who won’t fight him “carebears.” I think this is ridiculously funny. So, while I may feel just a wee bit of guilt for making him nerdy, I’m still gonna laugh at him every damn chance I get.